In recent years surgery has markedly advanced through the performance of laparoscopic and endoscopic surgical procedures such as cholecystectomies, gastrostomies, appendectomies, and hernia repair. These procedures are accomplished through a trocar assembly, which is a surgical instrument used to puncture a body cavity. The trocar typically contains a sharpened obturator tip and a trocar tube or cannula. The trocar cannula is inserted into the skin to access the body cavity, by using the obturator tip to penetrate the skin. After penetration, the obturator is removed and the trocar cannula remains in the body. It is through this cannula that surgical instruments are placed.
One surgical instrument that is commonly used with a trocar cannula is a surgical clip applier for ligating a blood vessel, a duct, shunt, or a portion of body tissue during surgery. Most clip appliers typically have a handle with an elongate shaft having a pair of movable opposed jaws formed on an end thereof for holding and forming a ligation clip therebetween. The jaws are positioned around tissue, such as the vessel or duct, and the clip is crushed or formed on the tissue by the closing of the jaws.
Some drawbacks of current clip appliers include the jaws becoming misaligned or not sufficiently closing during use, which can damage the jaws or inappropriately form the resulting clip, create surgical errors, and/or prolong surgical procedures. Other issues with current clip appliers can include the jaws not closing with sufficient force to form a clip positioned between the jaws. In some current clip appliers, the jaws do not have sufficient strength to fully form a clip in thick tissue or the jaws can be too flexible thereby causing the jaws to deform and not function properly. In addition, the subsystems which drive the closure of the jaws may exert too little or too much axial stroke, thus leading to not fully formed clips, or over-stressed and
damaged (yielded outward) jaws, respectively. Other issues, such as damage to the jaws before use (e.g., during shipping of the clip applier) have been experienced with some current clip appliers, which can prevent the jaws from functioning properly. Accordingly, there remains a need for improved methods and devices for applying surgical clips to vessels, ducts, shunts, etc.